The Blue forces had also field-tested the Army’s new C rations (combat rations), billed as “the balanced meal in a can,” which had been in development since 1938.** Along with tins of spaghetti and meatballs, Irish stew, or pork and beans, C rations included condiments, soluble coffee, chocolate bars, and a small can opener. The meal was the first designed to be heated in its own can. When the Blue Army was suddenly switched from fresh food (A rations) to what the soldiers then called battle rations, it came as a complete surprise, and the canned food was not well received. By all accounts, the ration was palatable when warmed but tasteless when served cold.52
An important aspect of the maneuvers was the testing of new equipment, including new portable two-way radios, which soldiers dubbed walkie-talkies. (“Soldiers are masters at nicknames,” Ralph McGill commented in the Atlanta Constitution.) These wireless devices were used to keep commanders in touch with forces up to two miles away.53
One bit of good news to come out of the maneuvers was that no epidemics or large-scale infections occurred. The Army’s “health defenses” had been tested and found to be working. This was no minor concern, as death due to infection and disease among U.S. forces in the Great War had occurred at a one-to-one ratio to combat deaths. (The 1918 influenza pandemic killed more than 657,000 Americans, including tens of thousands of military members.) The health report was delivered to the Army by Surgeon General Thomas Parran Jr., following an Emory University conference on malaria control and eradication. Parran said that the Army had a larger number and better quality of health-service units than it had had at the beginning of the previous war and that in the event of a draft, malaria, tuberculosis, and syphilis would be the main concerns regarding men coming into the service.54,*
Although the officer corps was sharply criticized for its actions during the exercises, certain officers and units had outperformed others, and Marshall could determine, through reports coming back to him, who might be part of his next generation of leaders. Perhaps the most outstanding young commander in these first maneuvers was Colonel Joseph “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell. During an important moment in the conflict between the Blue and Red Armies, Stilwell had led a Blue blitzkrieg-style invasion of northern Louisiana with a high-speed column of tanks—just the kind of bold initiative Marshall was looking for. Because of the enterprise and quick thinking Stilwell displayed, Marshall marked him for a major leadership position and would later choose him to lead Allied forces against the Japanese in Burma and China.
Another officer who unexpectedly benefited indirectly from the maneuvers was 53-year-old colonel George S. Patton, who had been invited to participate in the exercises as a referee. Patton hated being relegated to the role of umpire, and his redemption began at a clandestine meeting at a high school in Alexandria, Louisiana, on May 25, the last day of the maneuvers. It was also the day the Germans took Boulogne, France, and British troops were ordered to retreat to Dunkirk.
The men at the meeting had individually come to the conclusion that the most important lesson driven home by the maneuvers was an immediate need for a unified armored force separated from both the infantry and the horse cavalry. Envisioned was a powerful American version of the German Panzer divisions now slicing through European defenses. Beloved by many, the cavalry was beginning to look like an anachronism during the exercises, as trucks were required to haul the horses on long marches.55
The group at the meeting, led by Brigadier General Adna R. Chaffee Jr., included Brigadier General Bruce Magruder, head of the Provisional Tank Brigade, who had been arguing for this transformation for years before the 1939 Nazi invasion of Poland; Alvan C. Gillem Jr., Magruder’s executive officer; and other advocates of tank warfare. The group met with Brigadier General M. Frank Andrews, one of Marshall’s closest advisers, in the Alexandria schoolhouse to discuss the future of mechanization. The goal of the meeting was to take tanks out of the hands of the horse cavalry and the infantry. What Chaffee and those who agreed with him faced was unyielding opposition from the chiefs of the cavalry and the infantry, who were in Louisiana but not invited to the schoolhouse session.
One of the men Chaffee did invite was Patton, who had been a standout tank commander during the Great War. Although he held a lower rank than most of the others in attendance, Patton seemed to be the ideal candidate to help bring this transformation to fruition.
At the end of World War I, the nation had had a tank corps of more than 20,000 officers and enlisted men, but it had been eliminated by Congress in 1920. At that point, Patton’s focus had returned to the horse cavalry and the equine pursuits that went with it. He organized society horse shows from his base at Fort Myer, across the Potomac from Washington, D.C. In the early 1930s, Patton was regarded as one of the most accomplished polo players in the United States, and he was a driving force in creating enthusiasm for the sport within the Army.
But the interwar years had not been kind to Patton’s public image. Many Americans knew him only as the man who had led Army troops against the Bonus Army marchers in 1932—presenting an image of the commander that was compelling, damaging, and photogenic. Patton’s cavalry, followed by tanks and infantrymen carrying loaded rifles with fixed bayonets, had driven members of the Bonus Army and their families off the streets of Washington, D.C., along with curious bystanders and civil servants on their way home from work. His infantrymen, protected with gas masks, had thrown hundreds of tear gas grenades at the dispersing crowd; it was the same powerful tear gas that had been used as a weapon in World War I. One of the men Patton drove out of downtown and from his makeshift quarters, Joe Angelo, of Camden, New Jersey, had been decorated for saving Patton’s life during the Meuse-Argonne offensive in 1918. The morning after the Bonus Army’s camps were burned, Angelo had approached Patton, who curtly announced that he did not know him and instructed that he be taken away, a situation that produced most unflattering headlines.56
For a moment in 1932, thanks to reports in major news outlets, Angelo was the hero and Patton the goat. Between that unfortunate event in 1932 and his public reemergence in 1940, Patton’s service had been pedestrian, especially to a man who saw himself as a warrior waiting for the next conflict in which to shine. What attracted Patton to Chaffee, whom he met for the first time during the maneuvers, was the firm belief that the United States needed large tank divisions—and men like Patton to lead them.57
The participants in the schoolhouse meeting agreed that Andrews should go back to Washington and suggest that two armored divisions be created, employing the mechanized Seventh Cavalry Brigade and the infantry’s Provisional Tank Brigade as their basis. One division would be stationed at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and the other at Fort Benning, Georgia. The group assumed that Marshall would be receptive to the idea.
As if to underscore the importance of the schoolhouse meeting, before the end of the month, Nazi armored columns broke into France and shot through all the way to the English Channel, cutting off British and French units in Northern France and Belgium. The French army began to fall apart, and the British, who were in France as an allied force, evacuated 400,000 troops from Dunkirk and lost most of their heavy equipment between May 26 and June 4. France held on until June 14, when the Nazis invaded Paris, which fell easily and without a fight. France asked for an armistice three days later and surrendered on June 22. The grim reality was that Nazi Germany had successfully invaded and occupied six European nations in fewer than 100 days.58
With each wave of bad news from abroad came a new request for arms spending. As the British debacle was unfolding in Dunkirk, Roosevelt went back to Congress and asked for an additional $1.278 billion over and above the $1.82 billion he had asked for two weeks earlier. After the French collapse, the Navy requested an additional $4 billion to establish a two-ocean fleet of warships. Despite